Call 911! Yes? No?

Caloosahatchee River
26 42.84 N 081 46.06 W

I used to be a volunteer fireman. I've responded to many 911 calls; some real and some false alarms. Today, we were faced with the situation from the other side of the coin -- should we call 911 or not. Here's the story.

We are headed for Fort Meyers on the Caloosahatchee River. We passed through the Franklin Lock at 0900. A few miles later we came to the Wilson Pigott draw bridge. We hailed the bridge on VHF 09. No answer. We called again and again. No answer. We approached the bridge as close as possible and gave several blasts with our air horn. No response.

There is a phone number posted on the bridge sign, so we called it. That brought us to Dave, the bridge tender's boss in Brandenton, FL. Dave promised to call the bridge. 10 minutes later Dave called back. He got no response either. Dave said the tender could be sick or be having a heart attack. I told him to call 911. Dave said no. I said that I'd call 911. Dave said, "I'm in Bradenton. I can't call 911 from here. Let me handle it. It will take me 30 minutes."

At that point I had a dilemma. It sounded to me that Dave was anxious to not create an incident that could get him or the bridge tender in trouble. I understand that. I also understand that 30 minutes can make a life or death difference for someone having a heart attack and waiting before calling sounded irresponsible. Should I ignore Dave's request and call 911?

I thought about flagging down a passing car. Not practical. I thought about trying to maneuver Tarwathie under the bridge so that I could climb up the ladder to the bridge. No no bad idea. That's not only forbidden, it is dangerous and a cardinal rule of rescue is to not needlessly jeopardize the safety of a rescuer. Finally, I noticed a little marina symbol on my GPS chart plotter. The marina was just past the bridge. Good. I got a phone number from the GPS, called the marina, and explained the situation. They promised to send someone to check on the bridge tender.

Just before the marina man got there, Dave called back. He resolved the mystery. Due to a mix up, nobody showed up for work at the bridge. He promised that someone would be there in 10 minutes. One minute later, the marina guy got to the bridge and confirmed that nobody was in the tender's house. There was no real emergency.

So what should you do when faced with a time-critical life-critical *potential* emergency? How much time should you spend to think of alternatives before calling 911? There is no fixed answer. All I know is that if I had never been a fireman, I might have dialed 911 faster and thought less. 30 minutes delay before receiving medical help can cost a life, but 60 seconds of deliberate thought before pushing the panic button can avoid a needless emergency response.

p.s. Just as I wrote this, the bridge boss's boss called me from Jacksonville to apologize. I think that demonstrates outstanding customer service on the part of the State of Florida. (Look in my blog archive for 2007 to see the opposite. A bridge tender near Montreal who was sleeping and wouldn't open the bridge and who was hostile when woken.)

p.p.s. Yesterday was terrible weather. There was a really strong wind from the west that impeded our ability to motor westward. The wind slowed us down to 2.7 knots. We spoke to another couple last night who traveled east yesterday. They said it was crazy, the Caloosahatchee River west of the Franklin Lock had 3-4 foot waves on the river. That's hard to believe.